Dan Martell - Building a Startup Community In Your City

00:00:00.600 Three strategies to quickly create

00:00:03.440 a startup community in your city.

00:00:05.320 That's what this video's about.

00:00:06.400 If you're starting off or you've been in your city

00:00:08.800 for a while and you feel like you don't know anybody like you,

00:00:10.880 then this video is for you.

00:00:12.680 It's something I'm ridiculously passionate about

00:00:14.960 and something I discovered a few years ago

00:00:16.600 when I moved back from living in San Francisco

00:00:18.840 to a small town in Canada where I grew up to raise my kids,

00:00:21.800 I realized I knew more entrepreneurs

00:00:23.600 in every other city in the world

00:00:25.080 than I did in the city I was living in.

00:00:26.960 You know, and after a year finally figuring out

00:00:28.720 the routine and schedule with my kids,

00:00:30.660 I thought to myself, I gotta get to know more people.

00:00:32.760 So I went on a mission.

00:00:34.660 First, it started off with a Facebook post.

00:00:36.320 I posted on Facebook, who do you know?

00:00:38.000 Who are some of the entrepreneurs that are growth minded

00:00:40.100 that you admire in this city?

00:00:42.240 And I was really surprised that there wasn't

00:00:44.040 a lot of responses.

00:00:45.200 There was maybe a half dozen names mentioned,

00:00:47.380 but I figured there's gotta be hundreds.

00:00:49.000 I mean, I live in a town of 100,000 people.

00:00:51.180 They gotta live here.

00:00:52.740 And I started picking up the phone and calling people,

00:00:54.940 and I quickly realized that nobody had the list.

00:00:57.540 so I wanted to create the list, you know?

00:00:59.540 The list of the people, to me, growth minded meant

00:01:02.000 that you had aspirations to double your business

00:01:04.580 within the next three years.

00:01:06.080 So I started building this spreadsheet,

00:01:08.100 and over a three week period,

00:01:10.300 I cold called 179 entrepreneurs.

00:01:13.800 I wanted to get to know them.

00:01:15.100 I got their names, I sent these cold emails

00:01:17.480 that pretty much said, hey, I'm Dan Martell,

00:01:19.300 here's my cell number, I got a quick question.

00:01:21.220 I'm free now if you have five minutes. 0.76

00:01:22.860 And people would actually respond, it was ridiculous.

00:01:24.980 And I sent this to some of the most notable

00:01:27.120 entrepreneurs in the city.

00:01:28.660 And what I was trying to accomplish

00:01:29.880 is just try to understand their story.

00:01:31.420 What were they passionate about?

00:01:32.360 Why did they start that business?

00:01:33.920 You know, it was really important for me

00:01:35.060 to kind of find people that I shared values with

00:01:37.960 so that I could then invite them to something.

00:01:39.740 And what I did is I created an event.

00:01:41.900 You know, and I would suggest,

00:01:43.040 you know, this is the first thing

00:01:44.500 I'm gonna suggest that you do is

00:01:45.900 you can create a dinner or an event,

00:01:48.500 but you can also create both, you know, at the same thing.

00:01:51.320 So what I did is I created an event.

00:01:52.540 I call it the East Coast Kitchen Party.

00:01:54.880 and it was 48 people that I felt needed to know each other.

00:01:59.040 Out of those 179 conversations,

00:02:01.320 I whittled it down to 48 people

00:02:02.980 and I created these tables of eight.

00:02:04.880 And it was a dinner and I promised them three things.

00:02:07.440 One, amazing food.

00:02:09.280 Two, incredible people that you're gonna meet

00:02:11.520 that you don't know.

00:02:12.620 And three, a speaker that's gonna be amazing.

00:02:15.380 So regardless if the food was bad,

00:02:18.040 I guarantee the speaker's gonna be amazing.

00:02:19.920 But I knew all three were gonna be great.

00:02:21.820 And I did charge them like 80 bucks just to cover my cost

00:02:24.580 because I wanted to get them committed.

00:02:26.400 And I brought those people together

00:02:28.220 and I'll tell you what happened as a result was incredible.

00:02:31.460 You know, we had an amazing speaker,

00:02:33.960 a woman named Shaw Wasman.

00:02:35.660 If you don't know her, check out shaa.com, S-H-A-A.com.

00:02:39.320 She came in and she delivered a message 0.58

00:02:41.540 about how we really need to start looking at the community

00:02:45.260 and giving back and people that have had success

00:02:47.680 need to take an active role in mentoring

00:02:49.480 and sharing with others.

00:02:50.540 And she challenged everybody at that dinner per table 1.00

00:02:54.320 before the night was done, to agree on a date

00:02:57.060 and a location, a restaurant, to meet again in the future

00:03:00.220 over the next four weeks.

00:03:01.420 And everybody committed to doing that.

00:03:03.180 I can't tell you the impact that it had in our community

00:03:06.240 and personally on my life, where now I feel

00:03:08.880 I have a peer group of people that I'd never met before

00:03:11.640 that are now good friends, people that I recently

00:03:13.640 took vacations with, people that I call

00:03:15.540 when I'm having a struggle and I wanna kind of

00:03:17.480 bounce some ideas off of.

00:03:18.680 And I feel like I've really found this new sense

00:03:21.260 of community in the city that I grew up in.

00:03:23.540 And I wanna share with you guys

00:03:24.620 those three strategies in this video.

00:03:26.320 The number one is obviously create an event.

00:03:28.220 Figure out either a dinner, it could be eight people,

00:03:30.580 it could be as elaborate as I did with 48 people,

00:03:33.460 it could be maybe just a meetup,

00:03:35.100 a technology meetup with other tech entrepreneurs.

00:03:37.460 Whatever it is, just create some opportunity,

00:03:39.660 some reason to reach out to people and bring them together.

00:03:42.600 The second is reach out to notable people.

00:03:45.920 People in your community that own the car dealership,

00:03:49.140 own the malls, like people that you read about

00:03:51.560 in the newspaper, like older people. 0.93

00:03:53.420 I call them the elders, folks that you may not necessarily

00:03:57.460 have a chance to come across throughout your day

00:04:00.200 because I feel like those are the people

00:04:02.040 that have experience, that have been building companies,

00:04:04.060 maybe second, third generational type companies

00:04:06.780 that really have a passion for upstarts,

00:04:09.140 people that are just getting going

00:04:10.720 and bring those people together.

00:04:12.280 So notable people are really important.

00:04:13.840 They're part of the, to me, the ingredients

00:04:15.860 that need to go into creating this event

00:04:19.100 to make it spectacular.

00:04:20.860 And the third thing I think that is most important

00:04:23.880 is to play matchmaker.

00:04:25.880 One of the things that I love to do when I organize dinners,

00:04:27.980 I did a video recently on creating founders' dinners,

00:04:30.280 is I love to introduce people that I know should know

00:04:32.820 each other but haven't met yet.

00:04:34.920 So what I did when I created this dinner is I asked them,

00:04:37.820 I was like, hey, do you know this notable person,

00:04:39.340 that notable person?

00:04:40.160 Usually the answer came back, well, I know of them

00:04:42.260 but I've never met them.

00:04:43.260 So what I did is I put them together at a table.

00:04:45.640 I really tried, and this was tough because again,

00:04:47.640 I come from a small town and there's only a handful

00:04:49.980 of growth-oriented entrepreneurs.

00:04:52.220 I really tried to make sure that people at the table,

00:04:54.420 at least 50% of those people out of eight, so four,

00:04:57.760 they didn't know.

00:04:58.720 It would be the first time they met those people.

00:05:01.160 And I even assigned a moderator,

00:05:02.960 and there's a bit more structure,

00:05:04.200 but I really don't think it matters as much

00:05:05.920 as creating the event, reaching out to notable people,

00:05:08.600 and playing matchmaker during the dinner.

00:05:11.000 And it could be as simple, again, as a dinner,

00:05:13.040 or as elaborate as an event like I did.

00:05:15.180 Doing that for you as an entrepreneur in your community

00:05:17.840 will really help you create that sense of community,

00:05:21.180 especially when you don't feel like you know people

00:05:23.640 or you're having a challenge.

00:05:24.960 It gives you a reason to kind of bring people together

00:05:27.380 and create a lot of value for everybody.

00:05:29.700 I don't think there's one person that would have said

00:05:32.180 that that wasn't one of the most spectacular nights

00:05:34.320 of the month, if not their year.

00:05:35.760 I know it was one of the number one things I did that year

00:05:38.500 that really helped me feel a new connection

00:05:41.160 for my city and my community and an opportunity

00:05:43.900 to give back to a lot of people that gave back to me.

00:05:46.460 A lot of these notable entrepreneurs,

00:05:47.700 even though they weren't official mentors of mine,

00:05:49.880 what they created in this part of the world that I'm from

00:05:52.900 really inspired me to go out and live a bigger life.

00:05:56.020 And that's what I wanna challenge with you guys

00:05:57.540 is to live a bigger life and a bigger business.

00:06:00.060 I wanna thank you guys for watching this video.

00:06:01.720 Leave me a comment below.

00:06:02.720 If you plan on organizing something like this

00:06:04.600 to create a startup community,

00:06:06.140 let me know what it's gonna look like.

00:06:07.700 If you've done this, tell the story in the comments below.

00:06:10.660 I read every one of them and I respond.

00:06:12.180 I would love to hear from you.

00:06:13.560 And I'm excited that you're here watching these videos.

00:06:15.580 I'm really grateful.

00:06:16.560 And I'll see you next Monday.

00:06:17.700 Thank you.

Dan Martell - July 06, 2015

Building a Startup Community In Your City

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